DISTRIBUTION.
Our attention may now advert to the phonetic significance and distribution of the symbols of which we have just considered the historical aspect.
The sounds represented by the earliest alphabetical characters can only be a subject for conjecture; the sounds of those we have had under consideration were probably very pronounced, ranging from that of a strongly gutturalkch, to that of the jerked breath occurring in a short, emphatic, English “bah!”
We have seen that the Greek character was early mutilated; but the rough-breathing powers of the Greek Η were transferred to the sign ‛ and we may conclude that the Greeks were at one time very partial to theasper, their writers finding it necessary to prefix a special sign, thelene(’), when vowels werenotto be aspirated.
In Latin also the H was at first harsh; but later on indications occur of the decline and fall of the Roman H in the fact of Quintilian complaining of the h-dropping propensities of hiscontemporaries. In his time, Latin writers already affected great freedom even in the orthography of words containing an H; its presence or absence in such words ashonestus,ahænus, &c., being apparently viewed with considerable indifference. Cicero strongly censures its gratuitous introduction into words. The Romans are thus responsible for ancient (if not venerable) precedents in eclectic H-dropping.
The Sclav and Latin languages have treated the Aspirate with spare courtesy, having let it become the mere “shadow of a sound,” or allowed the letter to dwindle into an altogether insignificant symbol. In Italian, “that soft bastard Latin,” the H is practically a dead letter, and has left no legitimate offspring. The Tuscan dialect, however, has afforded a local habitation to all the banished H’s of Italy; and the saying, “Lingua toscana in bocca romana,” may be held to be an indirect allusion to the dislike that the Italians bear to the Aspirate. In French, the H is never an Aspirate; it merelyhardensthe vowels in certain words,e.g.,haie,hameau,hieroglyphe, &c., and its office is a sinecure in others. When it hardens a vowel, it forbids aliaisonwith the last consonant of the preceding word. But in Spain, letter H istreated with systematic barbarity. Not only is its presence disregarded, but, since the days of the Almoravids (eleventh century), or even from an earlier date, its rightful office as an Aspirate has been usurped by letter J. Besides this, its literal identity has been allowed to get confusedly mixed up with that of the letter F; so that Latin words while undergoing the process of acclimatization on Spanish soil have been observed to exchange an H for an F,e.g., Lat.,facere= Sp.,hacer, which is nevertheless pronounced “acer.” A reverse permutation occurred in the Sabinefircus(a buck) and the Latinhircus.
The Slavonic tongues are weak or deficient in H’s. In Russian H has the value of N.
Turning to the Teutonic and Keltic stocks, one notices a marked contrast in the fortunes of H. In High German it has retained an important and prominent position; although, generally speaking, it is less conspicuous in Low German tongues. The simple Aspirate, and the other and harsher varieties of H, were universally received into the Keltic languages; the Cymric branch shewing a slight preference for the former, and the Gaelic for the more guttural variety. Prof. Geddes remarks: “The Gaelicalphabet contains a letter to which, apart from a partial parallel in Greek, I am not aware of an exact parallel in any tongue. It begins no words, heads no vocabulary in the dictionary, and yet is found everywhere diffused over a Gaelic page.” Something partly similar appears to exist in Sanscrit, a highly aspirated language with seemingly no purely initial H. Max Müller[3]and most other writers giveSanskrit Has being the Sanskrit H, whereas some affirm it more properly to representgh.
Arabic and other Shemitic languages abound with Aspirates; in the former, at least, they do stalwart service. Throughout that large group of languages which resist systematic classification, and are chiefly known through the works of Tylor, Lubbock, and others, or still more recently through the agency of the missionaries,—e.g., the languages of North America and of Polynesia—Aspirates are copiously distributed. The Maoris are wont to substitute an H for several of the European speech-sounds, against which their vocal organs rebel.
In English, the omission of H’s that ought to be heard, is peculiar to England, and especiallymarked in London and the Southern counties. The Lowland Scotch are free from the defect; and the people of the Highland districts and the North run to the opposite extreme, and give to their H’s a strong guttural sound. The Irish and Welsh are also free from it. Men of English parentage and American birth, New Englanders, Virginians, &c., are correct in their use of the Aspirate (videAtlantic Monthly, No. 269). That the Americans are without this H-trait, may be accounted a result of the predominance of North British and Irish immigrants.
His Eminence Cardinal Manning, when favouring the writer with some valuable notes on the subject of Aspirates, gave, as his opinion, that the dropping of H’s in England cannot be explained by foreign influences. The Aspirate is put on and put off in certain counties—as in Middlesex and Gloucestershire—with long local traditions; and he believes that, like the Greek digamma, it refuses all submission to criticism.